Vintage Afghan Wool Kilim, Colorful Diamond Field, 1950 to 1960
Vintage Afghan Wool Kilim, Colorful Diamond Field, 1950 to 1960
Including taxes and shipping
- 122 x 70 cm (4 ft 0 in x 2 ft 4 in), 0.9 sqm
- Wool pile on wool foundation, kilim
- Woven in Afghanistan
- Free worldwide shipping with tracking
- 30-day returns
- Lifetime warranty*
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Authentic vintage Afghan kilim, handwoven about 1950 to 1960. Size 122 × 70 cm. 100% wool weft on a wool foundation. Flatweave, no pile, slim, light, and reversible, with fringed ends that are the warp itself.
What a kilim is
A kilim is woven, not knotted. The weaver passes dyed wool through the warp and beats it tight into a firm thin cloth. Wool holds color in the yarn and lasts for decades. Because there is no pile, both faces of the rug can be used. Natural abrash, the small shifts of color in hand-dyed wool, is part of the life of the piece, not a fault.
What the design is in the real world
The field is a lattice of diamonds on a taupe ground: red, purple, brown, and lime, each with a small cross or flower at the heart. In Afghan village and nomadic weaving a diamond is a seed plot, a field, and a protected house. Repeated across the cloth they become a garden of plots, harvest and heritage counted in squares.
The borders are multicolored stripes set with small diamonds and triangular accents, lights along a path, the edge of a courtyard. This is tribal drawing with a lived-in ease: it sits as well in a collected room as it once sat in a tent or village house.
What the design is in the inner world
Diamonds in this language often mean protection, prosperity, and belonging. A mark in the center of a diamond is a hearth inside a wall. Lime and rose are spring. Red and purple are ripeness. The taupe field is earth at rest. Color here is a dry-land wish: that the ground stay alive, that the house stay watched, that plenty return.
Why it mattered to weavers and the culture
These techniques were passed through Afghan nomadic and village families for generations. A kilim was faster than a piled carpet and still full of meaning, a textile that could travel, gift, warm a floor, or hang on a wall. Skill shows in the diamonds staying in rank, the border colors keeping time, and the fringe left as the warp. Excellent vintage condition. One of a kind. Free worldwide shipping.
Description
What a kilim is
A kilim is woven, not knotted. The weaver passes dyed wool through the warp and beats it tight into a firm thin cloth. Wool holds color in the yarn and lasts for decades. Because there is no pile, both faces of the rug can be used. Natural abrash, the small shifts of color in hand-dyed wool, is part of the life of the piece, not a fault.
What the design is in the real world
The field is a lattice of diamonds on a taupe ground: red, purple, brown, and lime, each with a small cross or flower at the heart. In Afghan village and nomadic weaving a diamond is a seed plot, a field, and a protected house. Repeated across the cloth they become a garden of plots, harvest and heritage counted in squares.
The borders are multicolored stripes set with small diamonds and triangular accents, lights along a path, the edge of a courtyard. This is tribal drawing with a lived-in ease: it sits as well in a collected room as it once sat in a tent or village house.
What the design is in the inner world
Diamonds in this language often mean protection, prosperity, and belonging. A mark in the center of a diamond is a hearth inside a wall. Lime and rose are spring. Red and purple are ripeness. The taupe field is earth at rest. Color here is a dry-land wish: that the ground stay alive, that the house stay watched, that plenty return.
Why it mattered to weavers and the culture
These techniques were passed through Afghan nomadic and village families for generations. A kilim was faster than a piled carpet and still full of meaning, a textile that could travel, gift, warm a floor, or hang on a wall. Skill shows in the diamonds staying in rank, the border colors keeping time, and the fringe left as the warp.
Material
Wool
Hand-spun sheep’s wool is springy and warm. It holds dye inside the fibre, recovers after it is walked on, and wears slowly, over decades rather than years.
The foundation, the grid of threads the rug is woven on, is wool too, so the whole rug moves and ages as one.
Specifications
- Size
- 70 × 122 cm (2 ft 4 in × 4 ft 0 in)
- Area
- 0.9 m²
- Shape
- Rectangular
- Pile
- Wool
- Foundation
- Wool
Foundation
The warp and weft: the grid of threads the pile is knotted onto. A cotton foundation keeps a rug flat and square; a wool one moves with the pile.
- Weave
- Flatweave
Weave
Hand-knotted rugs have a pile made of individual knots tied by hand around the warp. Flatweaves such as kilims are woven with no pile, so they are thinner and often reversible.
- Age
- About 70 years
- Condition
- Excellent
- Made in
- Afghanistan
- Design
- Afghan Colorful Diamond Kilim
- Colours
- Red / Rust, Green
- Rug ID
- 10
